#Pomeroy 1976 bultaco pursang jim series

Pomeroy was never headed after that, giving Bultaco a GP win-as a privateer.

They didn’t care who was on the Bul’, and they screamed all the louder when he took the lead about three-quarters of a lap into the race. Part of his confidence to charge came from the adrenaline rush brought on by the 150,000-strong partisan Spanish crowd, who cheered the American like a homeboy simply because he was riding a Bultaco Pursang. “I was going two gears faster on the outside.” In years past, guys would be a whole gear faster on the outside, but it still wouldn’t be enough to make a pass,” Pomeroy says. Pomeroy remembers getting off to an 11th- or 12th-place start in the first moto, but he quickly went to the outside, and he began passing one or two riders per corner. That was to my advantage, because I didn’t have to deal with traffic then.” “It was so wide that nobody would take outside lines. “The narrowest spot was maybe 60 feet wide,” Pomeroy said. The fast, hard-clay track was not unlike Saddleback Park in California. If Pomeroy was homesick, then the Sabadell circuit was a welcome sight, as it at least reminded him of home. I thought, ‘This isn’t like America at all.’ Then a week before Sabadell, I won a race just outside Barcelona, and I got another $400. So, I go up to the window to get my money after the race, and I’m watching DeCoster and watching Malherbe pick up their $800-$1200 in start money, and I’m thinking, ‘It’s okay, because I’ll get the purse money. Andre Malherbe was the champion, riding for Zundapp, and Gilbert de Reuver was number two, and I ended up beating them. So, I got desperate and borrowed a 125 and went to a race in Belgium about three weeks before the GP. Basically, I couldn’t come home early either, because a return ticket would cost me $1000. “I was out of my per diem, and the Americans were only getting, like, $50 or $100 for start money because none of us had ever finished in the top 10. “About a month before that GP, I ran out of money,” Pomeroy recalls. In 1973, Jim Pomeroy became the first American to win a motocross grand prix, and he did it in Europe.’ The story behind that historic win is legendary, as was the man himself. In fact, he almost didn’t make it to that first GP in Spain. I just did what I did because I loved the sport and I loved to ride.”Īnd if not for the love, Pomeroy might not have made history, because the money certainly wasn’t there in those early days.

“No other American had even been in the top 10 in any GP moto up to that time. “What I’m proud of is that I gave confidence to everybody on this side of the ocean that yes, we’re capable, and yes, we could win,” Pomeroy, now 51, says. Rather, he is proudest about what it meant for those who would come after him.

#Pomeroy 1976 bultaco pursang jim series

When asked about his historic victory at the opening round of the 1973 250cc World Motocross Championship GP series at Sabadell, Spain, Jim Pomeroy isn’t necessarily proudest of the win itself, nor even the trophy for that win-a trophy that he didn’t even see for 30 years. To prevent that from happening, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. COLUMN This Cycle News Archives edition is reprinted from issue #15, April 21, 2004.